They are doing the same to some 2,200 Canadian farm workers in Ontario and 294 fish plant workers in Prince Edward Island.

The sweeping employment insurance changes, we are told, are all about matching Canadians hungry for work with employers hungry for employing Canadians instead of foreign workers.

But even as she assured us that Canadians want to work, the tone of the reforms seem to dovetail nicely with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation view that a bunch of lazy layabouts are milking the system and forcing more ambitious offshore workers to do the work they won’t do.

There won’t be Canadian scientists working at McDonald’s, but there will be more Canadians working at McDonald’s or picking fruit, or cleaning fish, under the new Conservative rules.

“What we want to do is make sure that the McDonald’s of the world aren’t having to bring in temporary foreign workers to do jobs that Canadians who are on EI have the skills to do,’’ Finley said.

But what about Canadians who want to work, but are looking for a little government help in upgrading skills so their talents don’t stop at offering the combo burger meal?

Finley rejected suggestions that her government had not consulted before introducing these reforms, saying she had talked to employers and sat in on business roundtables.

But while she said she listened to Canadian workers, there was no mention of any specific discussion with unemployed workers anywhere in this country.

On the surface, the government proposals seem relatively benign.

The 17 per cent of 550,000 EI claimants who are classed as “frequent” users — those who have made three or more claims and received more than 60 weeks of benefits over the past five years — will need to accept a job at a 30 per cent pay cut from their last job and be prepared for a two-hour daily roundtrip commute for work.

That is, of course, unless you are in the GTA, where longer commutes are the norm and that two-hour roundtrip could be longer.

The government will twice daily email you a list of available jobs in your region, so you better keep your cable payments up to date so your Internet service is not cut off.

“We want to help a recently laid-off engineer who has never collected EI benefits get the information that she needs to find a similar job quickly,’’ Finley said.

She wants the heavy-equipment operator to find another job quickly in the construction sector, or a roofer to work in house construction until the roofing season begins again.

“Bringing in temporary foreign workers to displace Canadians is not acceptable . . . when we have Canadian skills and talent that could be at work,’’ Finley said.

But her department’s own figures indicate the jobs that are being filled by foreigners are not skilled positions.

The jobs being filled by foreign workers are cooks, food and beverage servers, kitchen helpers, fish plant workers, harvesting labourers (what you and I would call fruit pickers), general farm workers, babysitters and nannies.

“If there are local candidates who are registered as general farm labourers on EI, then . . . those claimants would be advised that these new farm jobs exist and would be expected to apply for them,’’ she said.

Employers cannot go offshore until those unemployed farm workers return to the fold — regardless of whether they are seeking something better.

Finley’s officials say less than 1 per cent of claimants are expected to be ultimately cut off under these rules.

But the others are about to learn the lesson immortalized by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. Under this government there really is no “bad job.”

Tim Harper is a national affairs writer. His column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. tharper@thestar.ca

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